You're welcome and good luck!

Very cool! Do you have plans to submit a Big Idea piece to Whatever.com?  I suggest looking into it if you don't.

(I know I'm not the only one who looks forward to those to find new books I'd never have learned of otherwise.)

I'm a serious newbie to the DFRPG stuff, but I still have 2c to throw in here:

If I imagine a dude punching someone with a grenade in his fist that has mythic toughness, I would imagine that if he has his fist around it, his hand would be protecting most of the area from the damage.  I wouldn't expect anyone standing more than 6 yards away to be impacted.  The guy holding the grenade ought to at least lose vision for a number of seconds, and his hand should sting, too.  Obviously the guy unfortunate enough to be facing off against someone with mythic toughness and the ingenuity to punch someone with a grenade would be totally toasted.

If you need an intermediary term:
tinsmith - mundane
tinworker - intermediate crafter
tincrafter - expert crafter

Also, using woodcrafter isn't bad since there's a real thing called woodcraft which is your aptitude in the woods. 

Judging by your description of the magic system you could also use
"X-chemsit"  -- this one workd better for more basic elements "Wood-chemist, Tin-chemist" it falls apart a little at "Sword-chemist"  But I really like it because "All-chemist" get it?

"X-shaper" -- this one works with everything
"X-synthing" -- I think this one sounds a little cyberpunk, but could do.

In a word, "yes".

I think this is just really interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)
the breeching of boys but not girls would have probably had an effect on girls growing up at that time (the change of dress was a special event for boys, and calling a man unbreeched was an insult)

That is really intersting but for a different reason in my perspective: If we still dressed little boys in dresses and didn't let them wear 'breeches' until they were potty trained (2 or 3) then I bet it'd be a hell of a lot easier to potty train them.


But to the topic:

I stand by my former point: So much of gender difference is culture related or politically traditional. If you build a world where your main character is a woman with political/physical/magical prowess over a majority of the population (not all or that would be a boring heroine) then gender differences really fade. Males and females both in that position would be equally obligated to reproduce if political tradition required it. They'd both be equally motivated to avoid caring for children if they were wandering warriors. Neither would be particularly fearful of their lives, being confident in their power. Yes if you wrote a bathroom scene / sex scene it would need to be adjusted between the sexes, but not too much.  In fantasy, you get a lot more leeway on gender behavior than you do in historical fiction or even regular fiction.

Getting back on topic.....

I would have to say that gender has a pretty big effect on character motivation and choice of action.

Example:

Male fighter protagonist gets knocked out, and is locked up in a room with his hands tied togehter. The man will evaluate where he is, and begin trying to escape.

Female fighter protagonist gets knocked out and is locked up in a room with her hands tied together. The FIRST thing that pops into her head is "holy crap someone could rape me" This particular situation for a woman is more emotionally intense and the need to espace is higher than it would be for a male character. I am NOT saying that all bad guys will inherently rape women, I'm just saying that women will always have this fear when in a situation like this. When tied up and unable to get free, a woman will not make snide remarks or do anything to further increase her danger or helplessness.

Another example.

women in real life often have to be much better at something to get the same respect that a man gets who is less skilled, especially in male dominated fields. This may have the effect of women being "bitchy" or even assuming an overly masculine persona in order to fit in and gain more respect. On top of that, the way a woman dresses effects how people will treat her.

Real world examples:

at my prom 3 guys were talking about aerodynamics and couldn't understand a concept. I walked over (and being incredibly nerdy) explained and expanded upon the conversation. They stared at me, and then laughed. While one of them said, "I can't take you seriously when you're dressed up like that" While in a t-shirt and jeans, my thouhts were valid, but putting on a dress took away any intellectual equality I had with my peers, as all they saw was a girl in a dress.

In college I worked in a unix lab. I had wired up all the compuers, set up the software and periferals, and my job after that was to simply be lab monitor and help people who needed help. I cannot tell you how frustraiting it was dealing with guys who didn't think I knew what I was talking about. They would try to "test" me with questions, argue with everything I said or ask to talk to my boss, who was male, and who would tell them the EXACT thing I had just told them. Then there were the guys would make passes at me or make general comments like, "chicks who program are hot"... But the WORST were when a guy would come up to me and ask me to help them with GUI asthetics because "girls are good at that"

I had to work MUCH harder than my male counter parts to get respect and notice at my job, and ended up using either humor or dry remarks to get through the day. (I will say that there were also guys who took my position at face value and treated me like they would a male lab monitor, so it wasn't ALL the guys in the lab who were being rediculous. I greatly appreciated being treated equally. BUT the fact that there were so many guys treating me differently was annoying at best)

In any case, I think women are more cautious (from a saftey stand point, they have to be, and it IS part of our culture) Also in real life, women are victims of violence more than men, by virtue that violent people will go after someone they PERCIEVE is smaller or more helpless (probably why most mooks are big guys, a smaller guy is not gonna attack the hero headon with confidence)

Another thing to consider is sex. (the act, not male/female) Sex is riskier for women than men. Women can get pregnant, and unlike men, they will be forced to deal with that consequence directly. Women can get hurt during sex far easier than men (again not saying this is the man's fault or that it even happens on purpose. An incompetant lover can be just as dangerous as one with a weird fetish) Women are in a more vulnerable position with sex, etc. Women will be more discerning with who they will sleep with, even promiscuous women, and they will take into account a guy's personality and behavior along with his looks.

Even when women KNOW they are smarter or a better fighter, they are not just fighting against the bad guy's idea about how women are, they also have the reader, and their own doubts and fears to deal with. Women will react more strongly to certain situations than men will by virtue of their gender.

I think that gender is important in how you write a character. In this post I just mentioned the effects on female characters, but you can certainly do the same with males.

This is all true in real life, but in a fictional story, if the setting implies that women /aren't/ necessarily the weaker sex (due to political traditions or some equalizer like magic) then I don't think that a heroine is necessarily inclined to be more cautious or afraid of rape.  Also, some women are naturally very atheltic and muscular, (I'm thinking of some of the athletes I knew in HS), and I don't think they went around with a higher sense of caution than their male counterparts.

I'm sorry that you had a lot of bad experiences in Academia as a female, but I think you'd be surprised at how the climate has changed since then.  I majored in math (graduated in 2007) and was never treated as lower than a peer to my classmates (75% of which were males). I was treated with equality in all my classes, too, not just Math.  But then again I didn't foray into CS much.  I took discrete math and was one of the three or so people who had thier book open and could therefore answer the prof and interact in discussions, so I don't know for sure if /that/ was why I was treated equally or not.  In any case, I like to think that the sexism of even 10 years ago has abated quite a lot.

As long as the writer is giving enough motivation for the character's actions I don't care about the gender choice.
When it comes to action sequences, I've not read any that were badly done for a character doing something he or she obviously couldn't really do unless you count having super powers but like this /is/ fantasy/scifi.

There are even exceptions to gender roles within cultures in our own history (a female ruler in a time where females had no political power, Queens, Joan of Arc, Saints), so even if a writer sets up a universe where males are only used for snoo snoo, but then have one who owns a bar or something, that wouldn't really bother me as long as we got to hear the backstory of why he's an exception (like maybe his brew is a family recipe and he just happened to be born male).


But if you want an example of a heroine who has no doubts and just rushes into the fray alongside a hero who second guesses, is supremely cautious, and even hides behind the heroine occasionally, try Boneshaker.  And after you do, reconsider if gender really matters.